"Mamma, mamma darling can't you remember! Try to remember. I'm your Augusta! Your little daughter! Augusta! _Augusta!_" she cried hysterically, trying in pitiful futility to pierce the cloud of her mother's mind by sheer loudness. But Rose Wilding only smiled with a gentle patience, and lifted her up, petting her. "There there, daughter, hush now, hush. I'll let you stay here. Though I wonder that they'd allow it." Augusta ran out of the room and came down the long hall to the common sitting room, where she found Wardwell at the table reading. She fell into a chair at his side and dropped her head upon his arm where it lay extended on the table. "Jimmie, Jimmie," she cried miserably, "it's no use! I've failed, failed!" "No you haven't either," said Jimmie quickly, as he raised her head and lifted her face up to him. "Of course there's always a fly in the icebox, kid. But no one has ever failed when he's done all his part as you have. And at least you have her here where you can make her comfortable and can know what's happening to her." "I know, Jimmie, I'm happy even for that. But I was so sure, so sure that she'd know me and be better right away." "She is better," said Jimmie stoutly. "Her mind is at rest, except about you. She is not able to place you. There is something about you that she has never seen before. She does not know you." He stopped short, struck by a sudden thought as he looked down with quick intensity upon the golden shot circle of Augusta's head and into the deep, pain clouded eyes. When he spoke it was in the slow, rising voice of one who struggles toward a new and amazing conviction. "She is right," he said in a low voice. "You are not her Augusta." "Why Jimmie, Jimmie," the girl cried in a trembling voice. "Are you----? What can you mean?" Wardwell seeing the quick leap of anguish in her eyes hurried to say lightly: "Nothing at all, as per usual. Only, you see, when she went away, you were a little girl with a little curl. And now--she can't understand it--the little girl is a--woman." Augusta put her hand softly into Wardwell's palm and said gently, soberly: "Your woman." Wardwell started as though a hot iron had touched him. The homely expression, in the way she had put it, and meant it, the gentle dignity of her complete surrender, went to his heart, and flashed up into his brain the revelation of the heart holiness that this little girl had brought today to the ceremony which, after all, had meant so little to him. He closed his hand blindly over the little hand that lay in his, and bowed his head. A slight rustling noise came from the hall, and Augusta leaping from her chair ran hastily from the room and down the hall. She was in time to look through the railing of the stairs and see her mother disappearing down the stairs. She saw her mother look back in a frightened, furtive way; saw that she recognized her; and then saw that she turned to flee from her.